Monthly Archives: February 2012

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India has struggled to create an organizational structure for effective counterterrorism capability. So far the effort has meant a number of parallel set ups that have not just coordinated well among themselves but have fought turf wars for dominance within the intelligence establishment. Now, an all-new NCTC, established to overcome those shortcomings runs into rough weather with some states. A Kashmir Life Bureau report.

The National Counterterrorism Centre (NCTC) will be a reality soon despite many other organisations existent within the intelligence establishment for the same purpose. The underlying rationale behind creating yet another counterterrorism outfit, is closer coordination between all intelligence gathering and counter action assets for evolving a more robust capability at the national level.

A story gleaned from highly placed intelligence sources allows a peep into the need for India to have the NCTC. On the evening of 25 January 1995,the then Governor of Jammu and Kashmir General (rtd) KV Krishna Rao was reviewing the Republic Day preparations with top security and intelligence officers at the Jammu Raj Bhawan. The then chiefs of Intelligence Bureau (IB) and Research andAnalysis Wing (RAW) were also there to prepare a plan for border infrastructure and development. On his last trip to Krishnaghati border areas, Rao was impressed by the development on the other side of LoC and asked RAW Commissioner in Kashmir CD Sahay for suggestions.

Sahay did not have many suggestions on border development, but ‘knew’ what was to happen the next day (January 26) while Rao would preside over the flag hoisting ceremony at the Maulana Azad stadium in Jammu. A bomb literally exploded under Rao’s feet that day. He escaped safe only because the handlers had erred. A bomb ripped the stage and another one exploded near the gate and a third one destroyed the parking lot.

A combing operation had been launched at Sahay’s behest, but the Japanese plastic timers could not be found, till they exploded.

Former intelligence sleuths say that information about the planned explosions had been culled just by sheer accident. Sahay, before going to the meeting with Rao, had consulted his colleagues and asked if there was something to discuss with the Governor. “Nothing new Sir, just routine,” they had all replied. Sahay had then asked for some recent files consigned to the record room, since his last meeting with Rao. Continue reading →

Wikileaks has released emails from Stratfor that expanded on a report that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak hailed a November munitions blast in Iran as having destroyed Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Here are some of the emails from the chain (I am putting them in chronological order rather than the reverse chronological order that appears at the link).

Source was asked what he thought of reports that the Israelis were preparing a military offensive against Iran. Response:

I think this is a diversion. The Israelis already destroyed all the Iranian nuclear infrastructure on the ground weeks ago. The current “let’s bomb Iran” campaign was ordered by the EU leaders to divert the public attention from their at homefinancial problems. It plays also well for the US since Pakistan, Russia and N. Korea are mentioned in the report.

This paper is the first in a series of policy papers on emerging themes in extremism and terrorism by Demos. These papers focus on under-researched dimensions of extremism, and do not present an exhaustive answer, but suggest new avenues of study. Future papers include the role of women and gender in extremist movements, and methods to de-glamorise al-Qaeda.

This paper examines the role of conspiracy theories in extremist groups. Numerous studies have considered a variety of factors thatencourage extremism: ideology, grievance, poverty, religion, and social networks. The role of conspiracy theories, defined as accounts of events as the deliberate yet concealed product of a powerful few,regardless of the evidence, has been ignored. This study is the first attempt, as far as we are aware, to research this subject and should be viewed as such.

Mourners carry the coffin of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan during his funeral in Tehran on January 13. Roshan is the fourth Iranian nuclear scientist to be assassinated in two years. Iran accuses Azerbaijan of colluding with Israel in the killings.

By Brian Whitmore

February 17, 2012

When police in Tbilisi discovered and defused a bomb on the car of an employee of the Israeli Embassy on February 13, it marked the second time in less than a month that the Jewish state’s diplomats had become the target of an attack in the South Caucasus.The other incident came in late January when Azerbaijani security officials said they had foiled an Iranian plot to assassinate the Israeli ambassador, a local rabbi, and other prominent Jews in that country. Police arrested two Azerbaijani nationals in connection with that plot.

In both cases, Iran has been named as the suspected mastermind. Israel publicly accused Tehran of being behind the aborted Tbilisi attack. And officials in Baku said the two Azerbaijani suspects arrested in January had collaborated on the alleged assassination plot with an Iranian citizen connected to that country’s security services.

Iran has denied involvement in either incident. But analysts say the two cases illustrate how Georgia and Azerbaijan — due to their proximity to Iran and their close relations with Israel and the United States — risk being drawn deeper into the quickly escalating conflict between Tehran on one side and Israel and the West on the other.

Citing people familiar with the gatherings, the WSJ report said that, while Alexander has not publicly voiced such concerns, he has warned about an emerging ability by cyberattackers to disable or even damage computer networks.

So far, Anonymous – and groups allied with it – had concentrated mainly on exposing data or knocking sites offline, usually for a cause.

But the WSJ noted that Alexander’s warning may show a growing federal concern over the capabilities of Anonymous, which had previously launched high-profile cyberassaults against U.S. government and corporate targets including Visa, MasterCard and eBay Inc.‘s PayPal service.

International Olympic Committee rules require that countries allow both men and women to compete as a prerequisite for their participation in the Olympic Games. Saudia Arabia, a country that has never sent a female athlete to the games, has been warned of this, promised to correct the situation, and then sort of did nothing for awhile and hoped that no one would notice.

Now, one human rights group says enough is enough and is encouraging the IOC to bar the Middle Eastern Kingdom from the Games, on account of the fact that they’re clearly dragging their feet on this. In a letter to the IOC on Wednesday, the organization demanded Saudi Arabia be barred from the upcoming London Olympic Games if they fail to send a lady to compete.

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There are no national teams for women, and physical education for girls does not exist in state schools (although it does in private schools). Fitness clubs open to women are few and costly. Many of the swimming pools and running tracks that did exist for women were closed by the government in 2009 for being unlicensed, leaving women to search out gyms operating under the radar or to exercise at home.

Shakila, 8 at the time, was drifting off to sleep when a group of men carrying AK-47s barged in through the door. She recalls that they complained, as they dragged her off into the darkness, about how their family had been dishonored and about how they had not been paid.

It turns out that Shakila, who was abducted along with her cousin as part of a traditional Afghan form of justice known as “baad,” was the payment.

Although baad (also known as baadi) is illegal under Afghan and, most religious scholars say, Islamic law, the taking of girls as payment for misdeeds committed by their elders still appears to be flourishing. Shakila, because one of her uncles had run away with the wife of a district strongman, was taken and held for about a year. It was the district leader, furious at the dishonor that had been done to him, who sent his men to abduct her.[ . . .]

“Despite being denounced by the United Nations as a “harmful traditional practice,” baad is pervasive in rural southern and eastern Afghanistan, areas that are heavily Pashtun, according to human rights workers, women’s advocates and aid experts. Baad involves giving away a young woman, often a child, into slavery and forced marriage. It is largely hidden because the girls are given to compensate for “shameful” crimes like murder and adultery and acts forbidden by custom, like elopement, say elders and women’s rights advocates.

For those of you who have never had the pleasure of seeing a belly dance, here is a video of the best belly dancer in the world, Tito Seif, who happens to be a man, dancing with one of his students! Here is another video of the Classical Egyptian style belly dance by Zaheea.

Singing and dancing are disputed by various Islamic sects. However, even some of the most fundamentalists in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan allow dancing at celebrations when it is gender specific and men dance with men, and women dance with women. Also, some Muslims say that it is permissible for wives to dance for their husbands. Here’s a typical discussion about these arts.

Young Danish women with immigrant backgrounds – most of them Muslim – continue to flock to private clinics across the country to have their ‘virginity’ restored for a few thousand kroner.

Several years after the little-known procedure became a topic of political debate, doctors are reporting that demand for hymenoplasty operations has not decreased.

Doctors who perform these operations have come under sharp criticism for legitimising the procedure and thereby protecting what critics say is the chauvinism and oppression that underlies the demand that new brides must be verified virgins.

“I don’t have any scruples about helping. The important thing is that these girls have good lives moving forward. You could call it my form of foreign aid,” Dr Christine Felding, who performs 30 to 40 hymenoplasty procedures each year, told Berlingske newspaper.

The procedure involves reconstructing the hymen – the membrane that partially covers the opening to the vagina, and which is presumed to tear and bleed the first time a woman has sexual intercourse. The doctor literally sews bits of the vaginal lining together to narrow the opening. It takes a little over an hour and is done under local anaesthesia. Felding charges 5,000 kroner. Other doctors charge as much as 12,000 kroner.

Felding estimates that three or four women with immigrant backgrounds call her each week asking about the procedure. Most of them, she said, are frightened about what will happen if their fiancés or their families find out that they are not virgins.

Women have been known to suffer rejection, public shaming and even violent retribution at the hands of men in their own families if there is a lack of ‘proof’, in the form of a bloody bed sheet, on the wedding night.

It is more cultural than religious. If the bride is not a virgin and does not bleed on the wedding night, it is a big shame on the family. There have been honour killings in extreme cases,” Dr Magdy Hend, a UK surgeon who performs several hymenoplasties a week, told the UK tabloid Daily Mail.

Doctors in the UK, France, Germany and Belgium also report that the procedure is highly sought after in Muslim communities. The irony, as Time magazine’s Bruce Crumley writes, is that “the increase in the procedure reflects the growing emancipation of women from tradition-rooted communities, but also the ongoing male oppression signified by the obsession with female virginity.”

Deaf Mute Girl Kept as a Sex Slave in Britain

A woman allegedly imprisoned in a cellar, raped and kept as a virtual slave while a child was stabbed in the stomach for smiling, a jury was told.

The woman, who is deaf and unable to speak, is said to have been subjected to years of abuse after being trafficked into Britain from Pakistan. It is alleged that she was locked in a cellar by Ilyas Ashar, 83, and his wife Tallat Ashar, 66, at their home on Cromwell Road in Eccles, Salford, and forced to sew, wash, cook and clean without pay.

Deaf mute girl allegedly kept in a cellar in Eccles was raped and treated as slave, court told. A jury at Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court was told she slept on the cellar’s concrete floor without access to a toilet until she was rescued by police in June 2009.

She is also said to have been regularly beaten, repeatedly raped and assaulted. The couple are on trial and deny any mistreatment.

Afghan woman burnt to death in Iran

The charred body of an Afghan refugee, allegedly killed by her in-laws in neighbouring Iran, was brought to southwestern Nimroz province, the victim’s father said on Monday.

Abdul Basir told Pajhwok Afghan News his daughter was burnt by her mother-in-law and husband in Iran’s Sistan Baluchistan province five days ago. She had been sprinkled with gasoline before being set on fire, the father alleged.

Basir, who is currently living in Iran, said her daughter was married to a young boy of an Afghan refugee family a year ago. But her mother-in-law would always encourage her son to rough up his wife.

Ahmadinejad in Islamabad for a trilateral Pakistan-Afghanistan-Iran summit – The three leaders stressed the need for economic cooperation and completion of all projects, especially gas pipelines, one to import gas from Iran and the second from Turkmenistan via Afghanistan and will be extended to India.

Intelligence Minister: There is an ongoing all-out war against the Islamic Republic Iran – Heidar Moslehi stated that “Based on accurate information, Iran is currently in a ‘heavy soft war’ situation.” He added that the enemy has hatched different plots in almost all fields and that the Ministry of Intelligence has so far countered enemies’ countless plots. Moslehi noted that the plots have caused many threats, but have also created opportunities. He stressed the importance of crafting new strategies to face the new threats that have changed in nature etched against Iran.

Strong criticism of the Iranian chargé d’affaires in Egypt and Iranian policy towards Egypt in general – An editorial in Asr Irandirected sharp criticism at the positions taken by Mojtaba Amani on the chargé d’affaires of Iran on Egypt. Under the headline, “Are you protecting the interests of Iran or Egypt?!” Asr Iran comments on an interview Amani gave to Al-Ahram in which he expressed Iran’s immediate willingness to strengthen diplomatic ties with Egypt and provide urgent economic assistance to the Egyptian people as they face pressure and threats from the US. He also noted that Iranians are eager to visit Egypt. This is not the first time that senior Iranian officials express such positions towards Egypt. He remarked that Iranians have not forgotten that President Ahmadinejad announced at a press conference in 2008, “I declare emphatically that if the Egyptian government expresses readiness, by the end of the day I will open an Iranian Embassy in Egypt.” Egyptian officials at the time received his words with apathy and disregard, in Iran with surprise and shock. After the Egyptian revolutionaries won, they received a similar message from Iran, and they continued to ignore them, claiming that now is the time for a transitional government, and these matters should wait until later.

Now representatives from Iran’s Interest Section in Egypt are making statements, saying that the Iranian people are even willing to pay for renewing diplomatic ties with Egypt. They also promised that if the US stops financial aid to Egypt, Iran is ready to immediately provide alternative assistance to Egypt. Continue reading →

Gunmen believed to be members of the Islamist sect Boko Haram stormed the fish section of Baga market and sprayed stallholders and vendors with bullets, traders said, reporting that women and children were among the dead.

“The number of dead could not be less than 30,” a Maiduguri hospital nurse told AFP.

The military confirmed the assault on the market but denied any civilian deaths, saying security forces had killed eight assailants and safely detonated bombs planted by the attackers. Continue reading →